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Yep. Only played 150 games in a season once - and won the MVP that year...

If Walker played the same number of games in his career, and put up the same career numbers, but did it in three fewer seasons, I don't think there would be a debate about his hof validity, he would pretty much be a lock. During his peak, he averaged 128 games played a season, put it at 140 and I don't think anything keeps him out.(adjust for the two strike shortened years of course)

If Walker played the same number of games in his career, and put up the same career numbers, but did it in three fewer seasons, I don't think there would be a debate about his hof validity, he would pretty much be a lock. During his peak, he averaged 128 games played a season, put it at 140 and I don't think anything keeps him out.(adjust for the two strike shortened years of course)

Perhaps, but that hypothetical Walker would have been a better, more valuable player.

If Walker played the same number of games in his career, and put up the same career numbers, but did it in three fewer seasons, I don't think there would be a debate about his hof validity

Good point. Joe Medwick would be the thought experiment that fits that bill: pretty similar career numbers all round, and though each played parts of 17 seasons, Medwick had some late-career years that are extremely partial; Medwick was a really strong major-league player for about 10 years, as opposed to 15 (at a lesser pace) for Walker. And as a result, Medwick has accomplishments like the three RBI titles and the Triple Crown that were clearly very attractive to voters; Walker would have had more of that black-ink dominance than he does on your plan. (Walker has the three batting titles, but was scraping by to qualify at times.)

In terms of actual value, I'm tempted to say that WAR is WAR no matter how distributed, but there are arguments that compressing it into really big seasons is more valuable. Of course, a player was what he was; a more dominant Walker might not have been as durable longterm.

One MVP, one fifth place finish in 17 seasons. And now he's Stan Musial. Yeah...I'm going with no.

The author never says anything remotely like this.

What the author wrote was that if there was no park adjustment, he looks like Musial. That's still a silly statement but clearly the author is not claiming that Coors should be ignored and therefore is not claiming that he comps to Musial.

there are arguments that compressing it into really big seasons is more valuable.

Sure, but (a) these arguments don't speak to ability; (b) that extra value actually only matters if the team otherwise would barely miss a playoff spot. This extra value is trivial and likely purely random.

Frankly, they are arguments that were invented and adopted to justify that individual's decision that so-and-so isn't an HoFer and selectively applied. Barry Larkin only topped 150 games 4 times while having 5 seasons of 100 games or fewer. From 24 to 35, Larkin averaged 128 games (includes the strike years) while Walker averaged 126 but Larkin got in easily and was nearly universally supported around here (as he should have been).

Mark McGwire had plenty of 150+ seasons but also plenty of disaster seasons. From 24-35 he averaged 127 games and given he was injured in both strike years I'm not sure he deserves any adjustment to that.

Now add it all up and Walker had just over 8000 PA which is low for an HoFer so, absolutely, his lack of playing time has to be considered. But virtually no consideration should be given to how a player's playing time is distributed -- that's about a 5th order problem.

He was an even bigger force defensively

He wasn't really and this is one of the misunderstood aspects of his HoF case and one that is sometimes held against him. He has only 1.5 dWAR for his career. bWAR does not say that he was an otherworldly defender, bWAR basically says he was an average CF who played RF his entire career. That's not particularly hard to believe. Walker is not benefiting from crazy, impossible defensive numbers. (By contrast, Clemente had 12 dWAR (and that's regressed!). Walker is more like Dawson (.9) or Bobby Bonds (-2) and is behind Rickey in the same PA.)

It's a bit of a trick of history, a bunch of great RFs retired just before I was born (Aaron, Robinson, Clemente, Kaline...and Reggie Jackson when I was alive but too young to know who he was). In terms of the top guy at the position RF is by far the weakest within my arbitrary end points. (Well, I suppose the 2012 season isn't that arbitrary an end point, but you know what I mean). At pretty much every other position I've seen arguably a top 5 all-time player...possible exception of 2B.

Though he actually beats Winfield and Gwynn (due to my system's blind reliance on WAR). I give varying weights to career WAR, WAR in top 3 seasons, WAR in top 5 seasons and WAR per PA. Walker is helped quite a lot in general because of the inclusion of the rate component. But he beats Gwynn and Winfield in all three other components as well anyway.

I should note that I am far from a Hall of Merit voter. As you can see the system I use is far from rigorous, just a lazy, fun formula I can plug players into at the end of every season. This shouldn't be taken as a claim of how good Larry Walker was that I take too seriously.

Frankly, they are arguments that were invented and adopted to justify that individual's decision that so-and-so isn't an HoFer and selectively applied.

Not in the slightest. The silly concept of looking at raw rate stats and career totals without looking at seasonal value is just people who are buried in books and to lazy to actually attempt to analyze anything. It's pure laziness to just look at career numbers and not individual seasons.

Say that the average RF in Walker's time plays 145 games a year, and that Walker plays 125/year.

Walker's teams need to fill in 20 G that another team wouldn't. Just say the typical 4th OF is a true-talent 1.5 WAR player, then the team gets about .2 wins in those 20 games. Walker would have given them something like .7 wins in those 20 G. So half a win lost.

But now his team also must use its 5th OF as its 4th OF. Let's say that a typical 4th OF gets in about 60 G a year and is a 0.5 WAR true-talent player. That means the 5th OF will play about 8 games the 4th OF would have played on a typical team. in those 8 games he is worth about .03 wins. The 4th OF would have been worth about .07 wins.

So the aggregate in my (ad hoc and imperfect example) is .54 wins a year. Multiply by 17 and Walker cost his teams 9.2 WAR in this example.

That is part of my point, I don't care if someone concludes Walker or Larkin or McGwire is a hofer, I just think that it's lazy to just look at career rate numbers and counting numbers, without looking at individual seasonal data. I have Walker directly on the line of borderline, some days I think of him as a hofer, others not so much.

Knock 9 WAR off Walker, and you're still at 60 wins of value.

Not sure if there is any reason to knock or adjust a player's war, there is no "magic" number for war that equals hof player. If Mariano Rivera is a hof player at 52+ war, and why isn't Chase Utley at 53(or Sheffield, or Olerud or Damon etc)

Heck why do so many support McGwire(58) war over Andruw Jones(59) war... (or whoever else in the same range like Willie Randolph, Helton, Bobby Abreu, etc) It's because there is more than just raw war to look at.

So the aggregate in my (ad hoc and imperfect example) is .54 wins a year. Multiply by 17 and Walker cost his teams 9.2 WAR in this example.

Knock 9 WAR off Walker, and you're still at 60 wins of value.

In theory, WAR is supposed to be correcting for this already. Walker already got 9 (or more) fewer WAR for his career than he would have gotten had he played 150 games per season. If anything, your chaining argument would argue that WAR is being too hard on Walker if you think his replacements were mostly above-replacement.

I go by Pennants Added, which takes season by season value into account. By this measure, after adjusting for season length, Walker is 60th best non-pitcher ever. I don't know if this makes him HoF-worthy, since I don't know what how good a player someone was has to do with making the Hall of Fame.

I have always thought that the problem with Walker's missed games -- from the perspective of a former fantasy owner :) -- is that they were very regular yet largely unpredictable. He wasn't on the DL that often, but he routinely missed a game or three here and there. You never really knew when he would be healthy enough to play.

Every year, Walker was missing 20-30 games, 15-20% of the season, but they were sprinkled all over the schedule. As Dr. Chaleeko notes, this meant that his teams were deploying their 4th and 5th outfielders more frequently, whereas if Walker missed 30 games by virtue of two 15-day DL stints, the team would have been able to call up their top OF prospect (who was probably a better player than their 4th outfielder, and definitely a better player than their 5th). If he played 155+ games a year for five years, then missed a full season with an injury, his team would have been able to address the absence with a free agent or trade.

So in my opinion, the 300 or so games that he "missed" during his career (vs. what a healthy Walker would have played) were more damaging than the 300 games missed by, say, Mark McGwire.

(b) that extra value actually only matters if the team otherwise would barely miss a playoff spot.

No. No no no no. This playoff obsession has got to stop. The extra value always matters, regardless of the team the player is on. If you have a 3 WAR player on a 70 win team, a 3 WAR player on a 90 win team, and a 3 WAR player on a 110 win team, those are all performances of the same value.

but anyone that looks at Walker and doesn't look at games played per season is missing a big chunk of the story.

It doesn't help that he suffers from Tim Raines syndrome. The strike and lockout make him look less durable than he was. He played 103 games in 1994 and 131 in 1995, 147 games played if those were full seasons. You see 112 and 144 games in the middle of Ripken's career and you immediately think strike. You see 103 and 131 in Walker's and you assume "Two more injury years." If Walker had decided to be injured those two years and healthy in say 1996 and 1998, people might have a better impression of him. Same number of games played total, but instead of:

Another 50-60 games added back (probably fairly IMO when you look at his games played by month split) because of labor relations issues does not change where Walker ranks in games played among RFs in their first 17 seasons, including players who played 154 game schedules.